


Let's Leave Henrietta Behind Us

by gaylabinsky



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (kinda just shitty pov writing but hey), Feelings, First Kiss, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Sex, Kinda, M/M, POV Alternating, Post-Blue Lily Lily Blue, Road Trips, Sharing Clothes, Sharing a Bed, Some angst, because why not throw that tag into this mess too, probably not very obvious but i'm tagging it so you know, well one road trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 23:04:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6303667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaylabinsky/pseuds/gaylabinsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ronan has been spending nights in Adam's apartment above St Agnes and one night they decide to leave Henrietta for a little while.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Leave Henrietta Behind Us

**Author's Note:**

> hey so throwback to the beginning of chapter 12 in bllb when gansey showed up at adam's apartment and adam's first reaction is "that he was surprised that the person was gansey and not ronan". yea throwback to _that_. ah hahahaha i'm okay. this is basically all fluff and i wrote it inside of a day (and my last fic took me three months to write so what is consistency) because i don't know what to do with my leftover feelings from bllb and i cope by throwing myself into fluff ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> anyway, here's some fluffy word vomit. you're welcome? maybe sorry? i don't know? i wrote this on my phone?

Adam's room above St Agnes had a perpetual heat to it, some stuffiness that embraced Ronan's skin even when the winter bit the air and demanded to be seen in breath and frost and dusty snowflakes on the windowpane. When Ronan lay awake, startled from dreams and nightmares and memories, he was thankful for the clinging air because he could not bear the weight of a blanket on his sticky skin.

The room was dull with faint and shadowed light, bluish and piercing the grey where Adam's thin curtain did not meet the glass of the window. It illuminated the barest details of the near empty room; warped floorboards and stitches on the quilt draped at the foot of the bed.

For the first few weeks, Ronan had arrived at this room in the dead of night after Gansey had hung up his phone, and Adam was usually just ready to fall asleep, his textbook still open on his makeshift desk, notes not yet put away, pens capped to preserve ink.

He would let Ronan silently in and pass him a pillow, and Ronan would sit against the head of Adam's bed, cushion between himself and the hardwood of the frame. Then, one night, Adam had handed him a pillow and crawled into his bed, making enough room in the twin for another tired body, and Ronan had climbed in after him. The pillow had marked a choice, but neither had a second thought before sharing the small mattress.

Adam would fall asleep first, facing Ronan and hardly breathing, lips barely parted, hair dusting his forehead and falling in his eyes. When his sleeping body turned the other way, towards the wall, Ronan allowed himself to curl around him, and fall asleep warm until his dreams woke him again. He tried not to bring anything back with him. It was easier when he already held something, someone, in reality; there were no empty spaces to be filled.

He woke every morning before sunrise, and crept out the door back to Monmouth. When Adam awoke, Ronan was another dream thing. He was an unreality.

Tonight, neither of them slept, they felt the weight of Henrietta crushing on their shoulders, even when they shared the load. It was too much for sleep. They waited for one to blink into dreams so the other could follow but neither of them did. Adam let out an almost imperceptible sigh.

Ronan looked at him in the dark, saw him in the dim light of the moon and of the hopeful lamp outside St Agnes left lit at all hours, like some savior to wandering ghosts in the night. He saw Adam stare over at Ronan the same way. He saw Adam because he knew him, this unknowable boy.

He was amorphous and ever-changing, afraid to find his finality, that violent monster that made his blood ache in his veins, made his marrow pound in his bones. He shifted between kindness and exhaustion, between sadness and no feeling at all. He felt anger course through him, but he refused to let it control him again. He would stop making dents in boxes and putting fear in friends' faces and he would work until he needed to be put down, busying himself from his terrible anger, letting himself grow numb to the throbbing anger. He gave himself to the trees.

Ronan could see how Persephone's death, a month old, weighed on Adam, how it all had changed him, how Cabeswater and the ley line pulled at the corners of his tired smiles and wrought unconsciousness into his body. But Ronan could also see this was an Adam who had changed, he saw hope now and did not apologize for what he wanted, full of sore and a mute affection for his new freedom, one he had not let himself completely enjoy.

They never spoke, these nights were wordless, but tonight Ronan broke this promise of silence.

"My mother was different, you know, before my dad died." His voice was soft, and so un-Ronan-like that it it startled Adam. His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a prayer, laced with the hope of _please answer me_. Adam did.

"What was she like?"

"She did things, she had a job and friends and interests. Sometimes she got angry. She liked to read to us and she always could help us with math homework. Dad couldn't. He couldn't have dreamed that." Cabeswater had only given back to her the part Niall Lynch had dreamed, Ronan waited for the rest.

"She made herself." Adam's reply was quiet, and silence stretched beyond it. Ronan lay on his back now, Adam lay on his side, watching the rise and fall of Ronan's chest. Adam drew his arm around Ronan's rib cage and rested his head near Ronan's heart. He couldn't hear his heartbeat but he could feel it on the other side of his sternum, thrumming through bone and blood and skin.

Ronan broke the silence again.

"When was the last time you left Henrietta?" Ronan asked. "Not because you had to or because someone asked you to, but because you wanted to."

Adam considered. He could not remember. He told Ronan this.

"I can't remember," he said.

"Do you want to leave?" This was not a question of the future, this was a question that breathed the present and impatience. Adam did not want to wait over half a year to leave. Ronan knew this.

"I'm needed here."

"But do you want to leave?"

"Yes." Adam loved the murmur of the trees and their anxious communication. He loved the air that followed him. He loved Monmouth Manufacturing and its exposed bricks and the people inside of it. He loved 300 Fox Way. But the past had poisoned Henrietta and he ached to leave.

"We can come back," Ronan reminded him.

"I need to come back," Adam replied.

"I know." Pause. "Where do you want to go?"

"I don't know yet."

"Should we leave now?"

"If we wait I'll overthink it."

Adam had shifted and now his right leg lay between Ronan's, knee down and knocking the two it rested between. His forearms supported his weight on Ronan's chest and abdomen. His gaze focused on the space between Ronan's eyelids and he was struck by how many secrets were trapped behind them.

"I couldn't have dreamed you," Ronan murmured. Adam smiled and watched Ronan's nut brown skin redden, shaded freckles dazzled into the camouflage of a blush.

"We'll take my car and I'll drive," Adam decided, voice louder with certainty. "I want to drive until an hour after sunrise and then I want to stop in whatever town we're in. I'll call Aglionby sick and you'll tell Gansey that we're okay because I don't want to disappear." _I just want to stop existing for a while_.

"Am I sick too?"

"How else are you getting out of class?"

"What if we both called in with mono?"

Adam laughed an agreement.

"You'll have to dream us doctor's notes."

"I'll dream us a tent and a sleeping bag and we can sleep under the stars and we won't have to worry about where we'll spend the nights."

Adam's fingers closed around the neckline of Ronan's shirt, and he brought himself closer to Ronan until they breathed the same air. Ronan's right hand found the small of his back and he brushed away a stray hair from Adam's forehead with his left. Adam closed the space between them with Ronan's hand still cupping the side of his face. He tasted chapstick and storebrand toothpaste and breath mints and a hint of beer, hours and hours in the past, because there was nothing more sober than the boy who kissed him back now, kissed him as easily as he breathed.

Ronan's fingers tangled under Adam's soft cotton shirt and dragged along his cool skin. He ran his other hand through Adam's hair and brought their lips even closer. One of Adam's arms slid over Ronan's shoulder and around to grip the back of his neck as they sat up, and Adam let his other hand splay across Ronan's chest, fingers curled slightly over the ridge of his collarbone. They moved and they kissed until Ronan sat with his feet on the floor and Adam straddled his lap at the edge of the bed, and they kept kissing after they had stopped moving.

They kept kissing until Adam pulled back and studied Ronan's face.

"I have a duffle bag, we can bring what we need."

Ronan nodded.

Adam got up from his lap and went to get the bag, dropping it in the floor. when he disappeared into the bathroom to get toothbrush and toothpaste, Ronan went to his dresser to get a pair of jeans and a couple of shirts. Then he took Adam's hoodie from the bottom drawer and put it on, covering his bare arms and shoulders from the night air. When Adam returned, toiletries clutched in his hand, he beamed at the sight of Ronan in his Aglionby team hoodie. He kissed him again, chaste on soft lips, caught with a slight smile.

They filled the duffle bag halfway. They put on their shoes. Adam grabbed his keys and Ronan picked up his jacket from off the floor and held it for Adam to put on. He smiled again and a warmth filled Ronan that he hadn't felt in years.

Wordlessly, they got into the Hondayota and Adam let Ronan push play on the audio deck, and that stupid murder squash song filled the small car. They both laughed and sang along as the car drove just a little faster than the speed limit posted on brilliant white signs shining on the roadside every half mile. Henrietta felt empty and they felt full, felt untouchable, felt known.

When they passed the sign with a greeting on one side and a farewell facing them, Adam felt his body ease and he let out a sigh that he had felt himself holding in the tightened cavity of his lungs. Ronan reached over and placed his own dark hand over Adam's lighter one, melanin on melanin, and caught his gaze with reassurance.

"You're okay, you're allowed to leave."

Adam wanted to tell him he loved him but it had been said so many times before, by Ronan to Adam and by Adam to Ronan in so many hundreds of ways and kisses and bare skin hadn't made it different. So instead he laughed and said, "Fuck this shitty town." Because he loved every crappy inch of it but he loved leaving more, even though he knew they would be back by the next week. Ronan threw up a middle finger at the sign behind them with his free hand out the open window and hollered a laugh.

At three in the morning, Adam pulled into a twenty four hour Walmart parking lot and he let Ronan kiss him until he ached and felt purple blossom under the collar of his shirt, the first time it had ever been welcome on his skin. They broke apart and went into the store and searched for sweatpants and underwear and a toothbrush and snacks under the glaring fluorescent lights. Adam threw condoms into their shopping cart and Ronan let their fingers tangle together. They danced to shitty pop music on the speakers and tried on reading glasses by the pharmacy at the back of the store and when they paid, Adam let Ronan swipe his card and didn't think about the total.

They got back into the car and kept driving with a full duffle bag and full plastic shopping bags and they turned off the stereo and talked about everything and nothing instead. Ronan told Adam every story of the Barns he could remember and Adam told Ronan about his jobs and every strange thing that had happened while he had worked. Ronan told him about what had happened with Kavinsky that summer and when he started to cry Adam pulled over and held him, drawing circles between his shoulder blades and pressing soft kisses to the top of his buzzed head. And then they kept driving.

An hour after sunrise they kept their promise. Ronan called Gansey as he woke up and told him that he and Adam were safe. He told him they would be away for a while. No they weren't in danger and no they hadn't been kidnapped but _thank you very much for asking and if we get kidnapped I'll call you and let you know_. He hung up and dialed Aglionby complaining of mono to a very sympathetic receptionist in the main office. When Adam called with the same, he put her on speakerphone and they had to bite back laughter at the discomfort in her voice. When they hung up they laughed until their sides hurt.

"Do you think she'll gossip?" Ronan gasped as he caught his breath.

"I hope so," Adam replied and he leaned over the stick shift to kiss Ronan again. "Maybe one of us actually has mono and we aren't lying."

"You been kissing a lot of other people, Parrish?"

"Yeah, Lynch, I alternate between guys and girls every night."

They drove for another half hour between wide fields and pink skies and listened to birds call to each other and watched the dew form on the road. Adam stopped the car at the edge of a grove of trees and they lay down, knees up on the hood of the car. Ronan told him the stories his parents told him when he was little, told him about Alice in Wonderland and Pygmalion and watched Adam get lost in the fabricated truth of these tales. When he finished, Adam had his arm slung over Ronan's stomach, good ear close to his mouth so he could hear his voice.

"You gonna dream me that tent, Lynch?"

"Don't count on one of the tents like in Harry Potter."

The tent wasn't like the ones in Harry Potter, and when Ronan woke up it fell from his hands and to the ground with a crash that woke up Adam, sleeping bag rolling off the hood after it.

"Better not be broken," Adam warned with a yawn.

It wasn't and they spent the morning figuring out how to pitch it.

"You made this thing, how do you not know how to pitch it?"

"Don't get smart with me, Parrish- aha! See? I know my own fucking mind."

"So why did I have to make the first move?"

"Is that a challenge?"

It was. Ronan won.

They spent the day in the tent and traded secrets until they ran out. They answered panicked a call from Blue and spent fifteen minutes reassuring her they were okay, that they wouldn't disappear too, that they would come back. When Gansey sent Ronan the day's notes from class, Adam, in detail, read them out loud to Ronan just to spite him and his loud protests. They got hungry and explored the town nearby, leaving the tent under the growing shade of the trees.

The town was small, smaller than Henrietta with only one gas station half a mile from the welcome sign and one residential street stretching up the hill away from the square of commercial buildings. They got slurpees in the gas station and made out in the empty pizza place until another customer walked in and they jumped apart, fear coursing through them. They did not know this town, they did not know the people, all they knew was what state they were in. They finished their crappy pizza in anxious silence and drove back to their tent.

Mornings were spent at the gas station and days were spent wandering and talking and distracting themselves from Henrietta miles behind them. They spent the evenings eating pizza and chips in the square or the tent, Adam would toss pieces of chips at Ronan and Ronan would dodge them or catch them between his teeth. Nights they slept on the open sleeping bag, using a blanket from the back of the car to keep them warm in the cool October nights.

Adam had dreamed a lot of what it would be to be free from Henrietta and responsibility and worry, he hadn't dreamed of a tent on the side of the road. He still missed a weight he had never felt in his wallet, he still worried over the notes Gansey sent them through the week, he still saved food without realizing it. He also couldn't remember the last time he felt like he did in this sleepy unknown town.

He felt giddy when Gansey called about the mono rumor and Ronan told him that _no, Dick, the mono isn't true but I do know what makes Parrish_ \- Gansey hung up. He felt safe when he realized he hadn't even thought of his parents when he left, and realized there would be no consequence. He felt known when Ronan touched him and his breaths shuddered pleasantly against Ronan's bare skin. He felt an ease he couldn't remember feeling ever before.

Saturday night, he and Ronan sat on the hood of the Hondayota and talked like there was space to fill and Adam picked absentmindedly at a chip in the paint. The air hung humid and stars scattered above them. It felt silent without the ley line whispering to Adam, despite crickets and birds and rustling winds. Conversation filled the quiet.

"There isn't a Catholic church here," Ronan commented, but it felt like a suggestion. _I love you but we're guilty, I love you but we're needed, I love you and we can be okay in Henrietta._  They had some mundane immunity to the rest of the world here, but weak guards never held and they felt their illusion diminish as reality crept back up on them.

"We can drive back tonight."

"We could drive back in the morning."

"It's past midnight, Ronan, mass is in nine hours."

"Do you think Noah goes to mass without me?"

"I think he goes just to watch you and Declan argue."

"Don't be an asshole."

"You should listen to yourself argue with him, you come up with some creative insults."

"I spend all my free time thinking them up."

"So you don't want to go back because you have nothing new to throw at him?"

"Bite me, Parrish."

"What, again?"

They drove back at four, and hollered the murder squash song until their lungs ached and the cassette started skipping. They took turns driving and quizzed each other on the notes Gansey had sent them. They squinted as the sun rose and Ronan rolled the windows up and down until Adam told him he would make him fix it if he broke the switch.

Adam anticipated some terrible shift when they crossed back into Henrietta, but he didn't notice when they passed the pleasant sign welcoming them to Henrietta. He was too focused on what Ronan was telling him to pay attention to the road, feet up on the dashboard, right hand gripping the roof of the car. Ronan drove them past St Agnes and handed Adam his phone.

"Tell Gansey and Noah to meet us at Nino's."

Blue greeted them at the door and led them to a booth before taking her break, sliding into the seat across from them as Gansey walked in, Noah behind him. They ordered pancakes and eggs and waffles and stole each other's appetizers, bumping knees and singing along with the radio playing from the speaker above them. Adam could feel the ley line humming, promises of something realer than magic and more fantastical than where any of them came from. Ronan laced his fingers with Adam's under the table and Noah noticed, sending them an incriminating wink.

When Blue finished her break, the boys helped her put up Halloween decorations and they let themselves feel some sort of normalcy. There was a sleeping king somewhere under the earth that they walked, there was some promise of darkness looming in the future, but the raven kids didn't submit to it. And when they stepped out of the diner as Blue finished her shift, Ronan kissed Adam against the Hondayota while the others whooped behind them, making Ronan pause to throw them a middle finger.

Ronan came to Adam's room at St Agnes that night, and curled himself around him, pulling him close, nose to neck, lips slightly parted and hovering at the skin of his shoulder.

"When you leave Henrietta," Ronan whispered. "Will you leave me too?"

Adam turned to face Ronan and tipped up his chin to put his lips to Ronan's.

"Never," he breathed.

**Author's Note:**

> *yodels* 
> 
> so first of all i should probably be questioning my atheism because my ass managed to write over 3k inside of a day which isn't generally impressive i guess but it is for me. second (and most importantly) i'm blaming [rileybleus](http://www.rileybleus.tumblr.com) for making me trc trash (and getting me into like half of my fandoms), so if you liked this fic, you can thank her.


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